Freedom Language

Our first concern for this Page relates to language and its search for meaning.  As time passes and a language grows old it takes on considerable baggage.  We have to work at getting the meaning of symbols as they either reflect important specificity, or wonder about in variant contexts in which we use and abuse the magnificent gift of language – by which we can express that which separates the human animal from the dumb animal, and the human from the divine.  That difference is found in the ability to communicate reflective thought and act upon it.  Certainly dumb animals in the seas, land, and air have means of communication, but that related to inward impulses related to limited emotional response and survival. It is sufficient in extent so to navigate life recognizance in any living thing differentiated from human self-consciousness – which is reflective thought and action.  The question God asked of Adam and Eve about the self-consciousness of their nudity that inspired modesty is not answered in the passage, but implied from the temptation.  Other questions appearing here are not answered in the text, but the answers for many of them appear in other contexts in later passages.  Further, these early exchanges between persons are quite sophisticated so we are faced with some miracle of understanding how they were so precise in language and discussion without having learned their A-B-C’s or Alphas and Omegas.  We are now so distanced from their culture that we need to analyze the human condition in the light of what we know of the theme and experience as it has played out in the passages of time and culture.  We begin with an adult couple in the context of innocence, a type we find in a child, a human being not concerned in the least with gender differentiation or the grooming provided by caregivers, unless the grooming is uncomfortable so to simple responses like crying, or laughing, but focused on the matter of experience.

Innocence gone, Adam/Eve and God have to deal with the consequences – as we do also in the loss of innocence, and the arrival of morality (right and wrong) – righteousness and sin.  Loss of innocence meant taking on self-consciousness to belief and action – and that to responsibility.  That responsibility relates to a god-like characteristic (holiness) for which we do not have enough righteousness to manage, so God offers a substitute in his mercy since we insisted (in our first parents) on preempting God.  There would have appeared a time for eating of the temporarily forbidden fruit of God that would offer nutrition for the children of God in a natural to a spiritual world.  Disobedience to the original plan led to the present human circumstances related to God.  Healing for all this deviation is found in the redemptive story of Jesus Christ.  Mankind seized social authority and that without the power to direct the course of nature.  In redemption the relationship with God is restored, and the ultimate purpose of mankind is returned.  Mankind was meant for the pleasure of God in love, and that is recovered in the redemptive enterprise of God through Jesus Christ.  It is a plan a bit too exotic for many persons to accept.  Persons become Christians when they accept the gospel, in faithfulness, and demonstrate it in witness and conduct.

We can only touch on presumed development from what appears to be God’s meaning and management of matters as they emerged, and that possible if mankind is cooperative – if all is to go well.  Some members of the human race are willing and some are not.  The consequences present a spiritual (moral), social (cultural), personal (natural) stew that leads to considerable complexity and disagreement.  Management of the problem spiritually relates to sin and virtue; to culture in approval and disapproval related to law and acceptance; and, to the individual in blessing or cursing related to health, human respect and self-meaning. All the ingredients in self-meaning come from the original purpose that human beings were created with a factor of the image of God that was meant to make them qualified for his kingdom in all life meaning. The point is that the story is cast in language.  We learn the history, catch the basic theology, and embrace faith as the road to understanding and assimilating that which is of God to the person and society.  We act on the faith by belief to change related to the presupposition of God, and rest the matter to work out as promised in Scripture.  For Christians there is no alternative in meeting human life and death.